Broken Down
by Smarty Cat
Summary: [Oneshot] Sometimes it takes a tragedy to force people to be honest with one another. 5xR ALL comments and criticisms are welcome.


**Please note: As of November 2011, ALL NEW FICS unrelated to previously posted works will be posted under the name Inverse Calico. A link is on my author profile.**

Remember those fic requests I took way back during Christmas 2004? I _am_ going to finish all of them. Seriously. Eventually.

I suppose writing a 5xR was really just a matter of time after all the fun I had writing Wufei and Relena interacting in Executive Orders. Wuffles is lovable! Really! And Djamilla M. totally agrees with me. So here's some angsty 5xR just for her!

**Disclaimer****:** Gundam Wing is owned by Sunrise and Sotsu Agency and distributed in America exclusively under license by Bandai Entertainment. I own nothing but the dvds and the manga.

**Completed:** May 6, 2006

_For DJ._ _And only about a year and a half late…_

**Broken Down**

by  
**Smarty Cat**

She heard him long before she reached his room.

The sound echoed down the barren hallway, a raging, roaring, pained bellowing like that of an injured dragon brought to bay in its lair. And what was she? Fair maiden and damsel in distress, gallant knight and murderer, or something else? A healer she was not and could never be, but perhaps a compatriot come to lend whatever aid she could? Or maybe a penitent come to beg his forgiveness for ripping one of his most prized possessions from him.

Briefly she wondered at her surety that it was indeed him and not some other patient. Distance and the acoustics of the building distorted the sound after all, turning words into meaningless noise and tone into mere volume. But it was Chang Wufei, no doubt about it. No one else would yell like that in a hospital.

She sighed raggedly, the color bleeding from her cheeks at the thought of facing him, and increased her pace, wincing as her heels clicked briskly against the linoleum floor and added to the ruckus. She sincerely hoped that her passage did not seem as dreadfully loud to everyone else in the building as it did to her. Noise filled her head and her thoughts, hammered at her temples, and roared through her ears: her own footsteps, the swift pounding of her heart, the shallow gasping of her breath, the omnipresent underlying hum of machinery and electricity tucked away just out of sight, and Wufei's yells rising above it all.

It seemed her very identity swirled with sound, a harsh din that teetered on the edge of chaos, madness. She ducked her head, shamed by the noise of her passing. The sick needed sanctuary and serenity, did they not? Not the enraged howling of a patient and the sharp rat-a-tat-tat of the business heels of a woman fighting her urge to run down the hall to him.

She hated hospitals. She loathed the harsh white lights that strained her eyes and bleached her skin; she abhorred the pervasive scent of antiseptics and cleaning agents that burned her nostrils and choked her throat; she feared the desolate blip of machines that straddled the border between sickness and health, death and life. If there was one place in the world where Wufei did not belong, it was a hospital. And she had put him there.

A quick check against the hastily scrawled number on the scrap of paper she clutched in her fist revealed that the room with the half-opened door and a raised voice interspersed by two softer ones issuing forth from it did indeed belong to Chang Wufei. As she drew near the doorway, she paused, white and shaking. She felt ashamed to enter, but obligation and a genuine interest in his welfare spurred her forward.

In proximity, Wufei's yells resolved into a stream of invective spoken in rapid-fire Chinese. She had never been taught the particular dialect he spoke. However, it had become familiar enough after several years of working with the Preventer agent, and she had a fair idea of the types of things he was saying because some of them had been directed at her at one time or another. None were flattering or even civil.

Gathering herself together, she reflected ruefully that she was obligated to enter if only to provide a respite for the unfortunate recipients of Wufei's misogynistic wrath. She walked in on the rather interesting tableau of Wufei reared back in his bed, terrorizing the two nurses who held his arms and who were no doubt only attempting to complete their official business. He looked well considering the circumstances, and she drank in his features: the silky black hair falling tousled and unbound to his shoulders; the dark, piercing eyes snapping with fire; strong white teeth bared in a sneer; his normally dusky skin pale and drawn.

The heads of all three snapped to her as she rapped on the open door. The nurses flushed and swiftly loosened their holds, and Wufei's eyes flickered in a quick head to toe sweep of her body before his expression smoothed and he stared at her impassively. Relena's fingers tightened on the straps of the bag she carried, but she met his gaze and did not look away. Behind it all the steady bip-bip-bip of the monitors echoed, driving as any heartbeat. She made no attempt at a greeting, and he simply watched her watching him.

However, with his attention elsewhere the nurses were able to insert a new IV, and his mouth twisted as they released him and stepped away from his bed. Had he considered it subterfuge, treachery, that they had used her as a distraction? No doubt. His eyes bored into hers for the space of one breath, two, three.

"You're not Sally," Wufei remarked flatly, contemptuously, and then he turned away to stare out the window.

Relena bristled at the dismissal, and the exiting nurses rolled their eyes and gave her sympathetic looks as she stalked into the room. The door closed behind her with a bang as she flung her bag into one of the visitors' chairs at Wufei's bedside and snapped, "It's good to see your memory, facial recognition skills, and sense of tact are still intact."

His lips thinned and the skin around them grew pale, but he did not reply.

Relena gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. "Wufei, I'm so sorry!" She sputtered apologies between her fingers. "That was a callous and reprehensible thing to say. I wasn't thinking!"

His brows lifted sardonically, and she felt like the biggest idiot in the world.

"I truly am sorry, Wufei. Please, forgive me."

"Why are you here?" he demanded, as blunt and to the point as always.

"Why am I here?" she repeated incredulously. "Because I should be here. Because I belong here!" She exhibited a conscious effort to keep from yelling, but the thud of her bag hitting the floor as it tumbled from its precarious position in the chair punctuated her exclamation. She blinked down at it. "And I brought you some books to read to break your tedium."

Wufei did not spare a glance for the bag. His sharp black eyes bored into her in a challenging manner that Relena knew well. "Fine, why are you late?"

Relena closed her eyes on a deep, shuddering breath and raked her fingers through her hair. "Wufei, you are infuriating."

"Forgive me if hospitalization has an aversive effect on my generally sunny personality," he growled, clutching his sheets tightly in his fists.

She pulled the chair up to the side of the bed and sat down, propping her elbows on his mattress. Her hands toyed nervously with each other as she stared down at his white knuckles a few inches in front of her, but she did not touch him. "I wanted to be here, Wufei. I would have been here if the convention wasn't so important. You know that." She hesitated before finishing quietly, "And I didn't want your actions to have been in vain."

His head fell back on the pillows and he snorted, but an expression almost like relief fluttered over his face as he muttered, eyes closed, "You're alive, aren't you?"

She touched his hand. "Why did you do it, Wufei?"

His eyes flew open. "You must be joking," he stated flatly, staring at her in disbelief. "You can't be that stupid."

Relena leaned forward, her nails pricking his skin, and hissed, "You don't take a bullet for someone you hate!"

"You do when it's your job!" Wufei snarled back at her. His hand twisted beneath her grip, and he grabbed her fingers. Relena started and leaned back, but he did not release her. He looked away from her, staring at the sterile hospital wall, and added in a small voice. "Besides, who said I hated you?"

"You did. Frequently. And I returned the sentiment," Relena stated calmly, but her hand trembled in his.

Wufei rolled his eyes. "I meant it about as much as you did. Maybe a little more." His mouth quirked but his tone was bitter and somewhat slurred as he demanded, "Is it difficult to imagine me so noble? I'm not going to watch another women die because I couldn't protect her."

Relena brushed a lock of dark hair out of his face with her free hand. Her fingers lingered briefly against the curve of his cheek. "Have the doctors told you...?" she started to ask but could not bear to finish.

"That I'm useless now? That I'll never work in the field again? That I'll probably never walk again? That I get to be a damn paraplegic because some idiot tried to get a shot off at you and I blocked it? Yes, the doctors did mention that."

Relena swallowed heavily and drew her hands back, clenching them in her lap. "Perhaps you should hate me then. I wouldn't blame you," she said lowly.

"Don't you start that, woman!" His hand flailed off the side of the bed, striking her in the knee.

Relena's head jerked up, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. "Start what?"

"Crying!" His eyes were wide but slightly unfocused, anger and alarm at her show of emotion warring with the drugs circulating in his system.

"Of course I'm going to cry" Relena exclaimed. "It's my fault! And I care about you!"

"You pity me!" he spat, the venom in his voice sending Relena to her feet.

She wavered in place, licking her lips as thoughts and half formed responses swirled in her head. How could she answer that? She did pity him. It was true. But it was not the only truth.

Relena squared her shoulders and loomed over the bed. She braced her hands on the mattress on each side of Wufei's body and leaned down. The end of her hair brushed across his sheet glad thighs as she stared directly into his eyes from a foot away.

"You are not useless," she stated, her voice throbbing with emotion as she bit off each word. "Do you hear me, Wufei? You will never be useless. I will always need someone to tell me the things about myself that I don't want to hear. No one is honest with me the way you are. I care about you, and there will always be a place for you at my side."

"Stupid woman." Even drowsy and mumbling, he still managed to pin her with a fierce, piercing glare. His right hand rose between them, quivering with the effort required to fight the drugs, and pulled the somber black ribbon that matched her pantsuit from her hair. "Don't look like you're in mourning. I'm not dead. And I'm certainly not going anywhere."

Relena stared blankly at him through a loose curtain of golden hair, tears streaming silently down her face. Her lips quivered, and his eyes narrowed. She pulled back and promptly collapsed, half in her chair and half on the hospital bed. Relena covered the hand clutching her hair ribbon with her own hand and laid her forehead atop them both.

"Does it hurt very much, Wufei?" she whispered.

The feathery touch of his fingers atop her head accompanied his sleepy murmur, "It will. I can't feel a damn thing right now with all the drugs they keep putting in me to keep me quiet."

She chuckled wetly through her tears, and her lips brushed against their combined hands. "You shouldn't be such a bad patient. Go to sleep, Wufei. This time you won't have to wake up alone. I promise."


End file.
